


Missing You (A Package Deal).

by noctecat



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Set Post-NXT Episode 23/10/19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-22 15:43:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22585228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noctecat/pseuds/noctecat
Summary: Johnny Gargano will always be missed when he's not around. Especially as long as Tommaso Ciampa's there.
Relationships: Tommaso Ciampa/Johnny Gargano
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Missing You (A Package Deal).

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThatBohoFemme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatBohoFemme/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy. :)

With every step down the hall, Johnny's neck _hurt_.

And so it had for every step since he had picked himself up and off of the mat after Balor had dropped him. At least then, it had been - well, it had a purpose. Pain's only purpose, Johnny had learned over the years, was to tell you something was wrong and that you had to fix it. As he plodded around backstage, over to the doctor's corner, every step - something is wrong, something is wrong, fix it, fix it, get yourself fixed. He had said as much to the doctor himself, when he finally got around to looking at him, _'Doc, it hurts. Something is wrong. Fix it.'_

And then the doctor shook his head, and Johnny felt his stomach sink to his feet.

Now, the pain had no purpose. He _knew_ something was wrong and, now, he _knew_ there was no fixing it but time. Time he felt he had very little of to waste; time in which he could, and probably would, be forgotten about, time in which someone would step up to take his place. Probably one of those awful Undisputed Era boys, Kyle O'Reilly or Roderick Strong, with their smarmy and smug expressions they had plastered on their faces twenty-four-seven. Or, worse - Balor would snatch back his old spot on the throne at the top as quickly as it seemed he had dispatched of Johnny. And no one would remember him, poor little Johnny Gargano, who in the end had been so fragile that it took only a single move to break him.

He opened the door. Even that, the singular, relatively tiny movement of his hand-arm-shoulder that it took to turn the doorknob and push, sent a zap of pain running up behind his ear. As he looked upon his empty hotel room - unlived in, empty floor, empty table, empty couchseat, empty bed - he felt his insides twist upon themselves and then pull into a tight little knot.

This was going to be his life now. His knees all but buckled beneath him as he slouched onto the edge of the bed. Wasn't it? The emptiness. The nothingness. Broken - his neck, this time, but it was always going to be _something_ \- and with nothing to show for it. No five-star match - no, this hadn't even been for the achievement of having the best match of that year, or even that week. No belt - he had already lost that. When he went back, he could already hear what they were going to say to him, in everyone's voices, from Hunter to Regal:

_'Sorry, Johnny. We've got nothing for you.'_

He collapsed onto his back on the mattress. Bad idea - the cluster of nerves and muscles in that particular area sung out at the sudden movement, his shoulders tensing and face scrunching up as pain echoed through his body for several moments that felt like hours. When it eased finally, he opened his eyes to the bare, white, dull ceiling. At best, he would be a tragic and cautionary case, stuck at home, with Candice occasionally visiting him when she got the chance in-between her own exciting and successful ventures. At worst, he was going to be no one, with nothing. The rest of his life spent staring at the ghosts of forgotten achievements haunting his empty shelves, all the lovers and friends who had abandoned him padding around his house, laughing at his misery and misfortune.

There was a knock on the door.

Johnny raised his head to look at it, then immediately dropped it down again with a barely silenced moan. _No sudden movements_ , his body spit at him. _Right, right, right,_ he grumbled back at himself, like a reluctant child forced to fall into line by his superiors. He probably could have continued to lay there and have a mental argument with his own body if there hadn't been another round of knocks on the door to interrupt him. This time, he forced himself to rise at a slower pace, lifting himself up onto his elbows and then onto his hands, moving his neck at the speed of an old, decrepit man. Once he was up, at least, the pain returned to it's usual rhythm, keeping the beat with his steps. He wanted to touch at it - really, he wanted to _claw_ at it, rip it open and try to fish out the awful bug that just had to be in there, under his skin, chewing at his flesh and causing this. But the only thing bugging him was of his own doing - he knew this.

When he opened the door at last and saw the face staring back at him, his first instinct was to close it again, to which his brain - which he was no longer in sync with, it seemed - responded with a reminder, _'No, you can let him in.'_ But still, his hand twitched with the urge to slam the (flimsy and cheap, but it was better than nothing) piece of wood in his face, because he didn't _want_ to let him in. Not now.

But he did anyway.

"Johnny," Tommaso said. Johnny felt he should respond - say _something_ \- but his feet were turning him away, putting his back to his gaze before he could stop himself. Tommaso's tone was odd - not a greeting, nor a call to attention or some sort of veiled question. It was simply his name. It was bare and open. Nothing hiding behind it, no ulterior motives or repressed emotions. Untainted.

Johnny didn't like it. He didn't _want_ it. He wanted what he would have expected and more than likely would have been met with a year or two ago: to be berated, to be attacked, physically or verbally, to be told and made to feel that he was useless, that his name was less than dirt, it was nothing. At least he knew how he was expected to respond to that, had the words and actions already pre-written in his head. He could flip the hero-boy Johnny Gargano switch, even if, right then, that meant hollow one-liners about superiority as he limped away to safety in fear of hurting himself even worse. But he could do it; he could repeat the lies about not being weak, about not being a coward, about not being a failure that he had believed in right down to his very soul not so long ago.

What he couldn't accept was _not_ hearing it from Tommaso, who, after all this time, had been proven right, even if he himself no longer believed it.

"Johnny," He repeated. Johnny felt his jaw tense up, which sent an ache through his whole head. Maybe it was the constant pain, maybe it was just who he was now, but a sudden bubble of irritation burst inside of him, hot anger sent spilling out under his skin. Whatever Tommaso was going to say - and Johnny could already almost hear it in his head, the words forming themselves - he should just _say it._ He had never been one to hold back, especially his words - Johnny didn't expect him to suddenly start now.

" _What?_ " He asked, the word itself stiff and tight like the muscles in his jaw, which had yet to relax themselves.

"It's okay, Johnny."

They were not the words Johnny had expected - and they stung even more. He spun around and, for a split second, in the brief moment his brain lagged behind his actions, he thought he might hit Tommaso for it. Oh, wouldn't _that_ have been ironic. After all that time, all that had been said and done, when Tommaso was finally being who Johnny knew he could be all along, who he _wanted_ him to be, that was when Johnny finally swung at him. And not for anything he did - not for the dark, awful, fractured past the two of them shared - but for Johnny's own failures, which he had nothing to do with.

But he didn't. His fingers curled into a fist, even if his slightly swollen tendons and joints didn't like it and his neck was still humming from the quick movement a moment before, but he didn't swing. Because as broken as he was, he was still-

"Johnny."

"It's not," He said. The outright refusal was all he could think to say. As simple as it was, it still managed to surprise Tommaso, who blinked at him and, at first, didn't respond.

"What?" He finally said, after a moment.

"It's not okay." He met Tommaso's eyes, and felt his gaze harden. "It's not! You just came back, NXT just got on TV, _proper_ TV, and Finn _fucking_ Balor has only been back for, what, five minutes-" He started to pace in small circles as he spoke, no longer looking at Tommaso (who he could feel still staring at him), his eyes instead flickering around the room, landing on objects only for a second before he moved again and they had to move to something else. With every step, every gesture of his hands and arms as he spoke, there was a sting of pain in the cluster of nerves in his neck, but the hurt only worked to put emphasis on his words, the full stop on the ends of his sentences. "-and I get _injured_."

"Johnny-"

"They put me in the main event, with you, with Balor, and I get _injured_. I fucked it up. For me, for you, too, probably..." He turned on his heel again to look at Ciampa. "Why are you even _here_ right now? You should be with Hunter, or, or...you shouldn't even be able to _look at me_ right now." _Because I sure can't._

Ciampa blinked again, once. "I'm looking at you," He said, voice steady and unwavering, the polar opposite of Johnny's impassioned and almost falling over itself speech.

Johnny went to respond, to say _something_ about how Tommaso shouldn't be here, not standing here, like this, in front of him, like a good and caring tag partner; how he should instead be hissing curses about him behind his back in his own hotel room, or trashing him to management to ensure he didn't get himself dragged down with the sinking Titanic-esque ship that was Johnny Gargano, or repeating to his face every thought that had been swirling around Johnny's head since he left that doctor's office, confirming that everything he thought about himself was true. But he couldn't.

Tommaso still had a way of shutting him up.

"Is it broken?" He asked, his voice still level, such a stark contrast to Johnny's own internal monologue that it took his brain a few seconds to decipher what he was saying.

"N-no. At least, they don't think so."

"Then you'll be back in, what, a couple months? Maybe a little longer?" Tommaso moved his shoulders in a small shrug. "Johnny, that's nothing."

Johnny could feel his face almost moving into an expression of disbelief. "A couple months is not _nothing_ , Tommaso-"

"Who was gone for a whole year and didn't get forgotten?" Tommaso raised his eyebrows at Johnny. "Mostly thanks to a certain someone..." Johnny shook his head.

"That was different."

"How? Please, don't say it's because I'm better or something, because then I really will walk out of here."

When Johnny just looked at him, without any other argument or reasoning, he shook his head.

"Johnny..." He took a step forward, moving away from where he had been positioned in front of the doorway and closing the space between them. He could have reached out and touched Johnny, now - for a second, he thought he was going to, but he continued to speak, gaze focused on him, locking him in place for now. "I don't know if you've noticed, but we're kind of a package deal. As long as you were around, they didn't forget about me. And as long as I'm around... they won't forget about you."

"They didn't forget about you because you were the _champion_. I already lost it, I wasn't even fighting _for_ a belt-"

"You're more than a belt, Johnny," Tommaso seemed to cut off every thought before he could form it. "Maybe Adam Cole needs Goldie to make himself seem important, maybe...maybe _I_ do. But _you_ , of all people, don't. Otherwise they wouldn't have been so loud when I had it, and you didn't," He added the last sentence with a small laugh, but Johnny's face didn't move.

His brain was working. The part of his brain that pushed him, a constant, never-ending hamster wheel of determination or maybe desperation, pushed him to be the best, to conquer anything, but went into an out of control overdrive and began to self-destruct the moment it encountered an obstacle it couldn't find a way around. It whirred away in the back of his mind at a frantic pace as it tried to muster up arguments to everything Tommaso was saying; reasons he couldn't do that, reasons he was wrong, reasons Johnny would be forgotten, reasons he would be left to crumble and turn to nothing but dust that might make someone, one day, happen to tear up - if the wind was blowing the right way - but would be forgotten as soon as they wiped their eyes clear.

"Johnny. They won't forget. I promise you; I'll make sure of that." Ciampa's voice seemed far away under the sound of Johnny's own hard-drive of a brain spinning away inside his head, but he tried to listen. He _tried;_ tried to let Ciampa's words in.

Finally, he sighed. It wasn't acceptance, but more that his tired and sore body and mind simply couldn't take the war of words versus thoughts any longer. He collapsed with weak knees onto his bed again, shoulders slouched over as he sat, staring at the floor around his feet. His neck hated the positioning, but he ignored it. He had heard enough of it's complaints today.

"That's not fair," he said. "That's not fair that you have to do all that work for me. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. The only person who has to be sorry is Balor, and I'll make him sorry." He heard Ciampa laugh to himself. Then, when Johnny once again didn't reciprocate his laugh, he watched him lightly kick at Johnny's own shoe for his attention. "Besides, you did the same for me. Even if you didn't realize, you know, because you're such a great guy and all..."

Johnny looked up at Tommaso, who had a somewhat coy expression on his face, and felt, for a moment, a smile tug at the corners of his own mouth in response. But his expression fell almost as soon as it had appeared as his thoughts began to creep back in.

"Are we cursed?

"What?"

Johnny looked at the ground. His fingers brushed the back of his neck. The pain was fading; not all at once, but bit by bit, like the fade-out at the end of an old movie, as the two protagonists walk off into the sunset, problems put at ease. Maybe the painkillers they had given and all but forced him to take - given the choice, he would rather swim in his own suffering - were setting in. "It's like...every time we're together, we get injured. Now...when we went to Smackdown...the tournament, do you remember that? _Every time_ , something happens."

In the breath of silence after Johnny finished speaking, the word rung in his head. _Curse_. It might have echoed forever if Tommaso hadn't barked out a laugh.

"I don't believe in curses, Johnny-boy." He felt Tommaso's hand meet his shoulder. He almost flinched, expecting a hit, even just in the form of a relatively friendly slap, but still some sort of disregard for his body, his pain. But Tommaso's touch was restrained, his palm sliding softly over the bone of his shoulder. The only pressure came when he dug his fingers into his shoulders slightly in a squeeze. "And I don't think you do either."

He wanted to disagree - _'Well, actually, since I was the one who brought it up, then obviously I do'_ \- but when he opened his mouth, the words that came out were, "You don't?"

It sounded pathetic; desperate.

"Of course not. Otherwise you would have called me the Boogeyman and run away instead of trying to beat my ass for a whole year." He looked up at Tommaso again, who flashed him a quick, toothy grin. Johnny didn't want to agree with him - he was wrong, wrong again, his thoughts had always been prone to neurotic flights of fancy and theories of curses and hexes out of the Disney films he had seen a hundred times over - but he found he couldn't disagree with him, either. Tommaso had a point - as much as he _hated_ it when Tommaso had a point, he had one.

"It is kind of funny, though." The mattress beneath him sunk a little further as Tommaso sat down on the edge of the bed next to him. The hand that had been resting on Johnny's shoulder slid down to his waist before Johnny had even noticed it moving, pulling the two of them together. "How it keeps happening."

"That's not funny, Tommaso."

"Ironic, then. Alanis." Despite himself, Johnny let out a small snort of amusement.

It was odd. If he was being honest with himself, Johnny still couldn't tell whether he and Tommaso got along again, now. The way they spoke to each other, acted around each other, certainly followed none of the conventional boundaries of friendship, or a relationship, or nemesis-ship. It was as though every sentence and every action were another stepping stone, and every stone they skipped onto was different; they went from like, to hate, to love, all in just a few small moments. They made casual chat about despising one another and wanting nothing more than to hurt the other in a time not so long ago; they laughed and joked and enjoyed each others company like lovers.

As they sat together in silence for a few moments, Johnny was certain his brain was going to spit out something else for him to get worked up over. Another looming disaster situation imminent in the near future; another diatribe about why he should give it all up, why his whole life up until this point had been for nought. But nothing came. All he heard was Tommaso's breathing next to him.

"Hey, I never told you," Tommaso interrupted the quiet. Johnny was almost disappointed - he had bee enjoying it - but he not enough to not respond.

"What?"

"What I realized. In the hospital, after I had my surgery." A phonecall from forever ago, emotional and borderline nonsensical words from a hospital bed in the middle of the night. A promise to be there in the morning, to talk, at last. A concerned and rather disapproving look from Candice as he boarded a flight, but it was all worth it, all worth it in the end...

"Oh. Yeah. What was it?"

Ciampa smiled at him. "We can't keep missing each other forever, Johnny. No matter what - injuries, distractions, other people, corporate bullshit, whatever. We'll find each other again."

Johnny thought about his words for a moment. His hand fell away from his neck and landed on Tommaso's knee, and the smile that had threatened to break out of it's cage earlier finally did.

"Package deal."


End file.
